Tag Archives: Sarum Books

Thanks to asingleblog for permission to repost these pictures from the Durham Cathedral Shop:

This, then, is how the shelves were looking during Holy Week this year in what was once described as one of the UK’s finest theological bookshops; and these “are just a few photos,” says asingleblog. “Some shelves are entirely empty.”

At the time of writing our petition calling upon the Dean and Chapter “to take decisive action now to rescue the shop from further decimation” runs to 364 signatures. Alan Parker, the 357th person to sign it, asks:

Is the North East going to be the forgotten region for access to vital Christian literature? This is in fact the cradle of Christianity in England!

For comparison, I offer you these pictures which I took at the beginning of Lent, during a visit to Sarum Books, Salisbury, a fine example of how a Christian bookshop ought to be stocked, making the most of every inch of shelf space:

Yesterday I mentioned that the Church Times was due to publish an article about Mark Clifford’s new bookshop in Salisbury. It also has a good roundup of recent developments in the case of St Stephen the Great. The piece is here and is reproduced below.

A NEW Christian bookshop opens in Salisbury tomorrow. The owner is Mark Clifford, a former manager of Church House Bookshop, who was recently made redundant from the Sarum College Bookshop.

Mr Clifford lost his job in a col­lege cost-cutting exercise, having seen sales rise by ten per cent between September 2007 and June 2008. He had taken over a struggling shop with declining sales, and described his three years there as “tough”. Sales rose despite staff cuts last year, and the shop was said to be picking up a great deal of the business of the former SPCK shop in Salisbury after its new owners, the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust (SSG), started bankruptcy proceedings in Texas (News, 13 June 2008). The college’s shop is now being run by its librarians.

The SSG shop is still trading in a limited way in Salisbury, managed by a member of the Brewer family. Mark and Phil Brewer are directors of SSG, an Eastern Orthodox charity based in the US. Many UK suppliers will not deal with SSG, but the Salis­bury and Chichester stores are re­ported to have taken in remaindered books from shops closed by the Brewer brothers. Trading Standards have instructed that SPCK signage is to be removed from the shop front at Salisbury.

Sarum College tried twice to sell the college bookshop to SSG, a move Mr Clifford opposed. The trustees gave him the option last summer of leaving or buying the business him­self, or of someone else’s buying it. It was not prepared to negotiate about the rent. After Mr Clifford announ­ced on 11 August last year that he was going to open his own business, he was given an hour to leave, he said.

The new shop will eventually have two trading floors, he says. “Salis­bury needs a city-centre Christian bookshop, and I think we’ve got the knowledge and experience to pro­vide a really good service. The book trade has got excited by it, and I have tremendous support from publishers and suppliers.”

Restricted covenants limit former SPCK shops to bookselling with a broad Christian tradition. The Brewer brothers tried unsuccessfully to sell many of the shops in April 2008. They sold the Exeter shop in September 2008 for £507,000. It is now GemStar Jewellery and Gifts.

Thirty former employees of SPCK Bookshops are taking their cases to an employment tribunal (News, 12 September 2008). Pensions, treat­ment of staff, payment to creditors, responsibility for leases, and legal threats are all issues as yet unre­solved in what one former employee has described as a “trail of damage and despair”. The SPCK mission society is no longer involved with any of the business of the SSG shops.

Here’s hoping for a LOT of media coverage for our campaign in January.

Rubies in the dust are becoming more common, and we now have at least five new independent bookshops set up addressing the market niches previously occupied by SPCK (Leicester, Norwich, Lincoln, Cardiff and Salisbury) and often run by ex-SPCK staff.

There are also a number of other independent initiatives that I don’t know enough about to add to this list.

The ex-Manager of the bookshop at Sarum College Mark Clifford is opening a new bookshop in Catherine Street in Salisbury. There is a report in the Church Times tomorrow.

Sarum Books on Catherine Street, Salisbury

“Clifford told Christian Marketplace that he had secured premises in Catherine Street in the city and was hopeful of being able to open by the middle of October. “I am currently finalising all the legal details with the lease etc. and hope to have everything completed in the next couple of weeks.”

The new shop is to be called Sarum Books and Clifford’s aim is to serve the whole community of Salisbury and maintain the supply of a wide range of Christian books across the theological spectrum.

Clifford said he had received a lot of support, particularly from his two main financial backers, and also from a number of Christian publishers and distributors alike. “I’ve also met the suffragan Bishop who has also been very encouraging and supportive of what I am trying to do and I also know that local clergy will prefer to have a shop in the main shopping area.”

In fact the new shop officially opens on January 3rd.

My Comment

These new independent shops in locations where SPCK bookshops previously existed are preserving the “broad” emphasis of the old SPCK chain (and in my opinion are far more strategic for inter-communal relations than certain Prime Ministers carrying Korans under their arms when the media are around), so I’m keen to encourage them.

In Salisbury, I think it is likely to end up with the Sarum College Bookshop as a specialist academic shop, and Sarum Books on Catherine Street catering to a more general market in the City Centre.

The shop which used to be part of the SPCK chain is the one at 51 High Street, Salisbury and this may soon be called “Saint Stephen the Great” or “Third Space Books” or “ENC Ltd” or “SSG LLC” or whatever the name (or alleged name) is this month, after action by Trading Standards to – I am told – make them take down the SPCK name that they lost the right to use around 14 months ago. I think the sign finally came down about a week ago. I encourage you not to use the Saint Stephen the Great bookshop for all the reasons I have posted previously.

Summary

So, in summary:

Please take a look at Sarum Books in Catherine Street, Salisbury.

Avoid the Saint Stephen the Great Christian Bookshop in the High Street in Salisbury. Remember, it is run by unethicalbullies.

The Sarum College bookshop has changed in some ways but is still run by the college. Check this shop out too.

Don’t forget to order your secular books at the Christian bookshop too, if the service fits.

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This site was set up to provide a news portal and discussion forum during the rundown of the former SPCK Bookshops by the Brewer brothers. It's now largely an archive site, but remains open for comments, discussion and occasional news items...

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